In recent, the use of a passenger air bag has grown in order to ensure safety of a passenger in addition to a driver when a collision occurs.
In a conventional passenger air bag, as shown in FIG. 1, an air bag housing 2 having an inflator 1 is provided in a crush pad 3 to expand a folded airbag cushion 4 in air bag housing 2 by gas explosion of inflator 1 when a collision occurs, thus preventing an injury of a passenger on a passenger seat due to a collision with crush pad 3.
Additionally, a tether 5 which is made of the same material as airbag cushion 4 is provided in airbag cushion 4 to desirably expand airbag cushion 4, so that airbag cushion 4 stably supports the passenger of the passenger seat.
Furthermore, in a conventional air bag device, folded airbag cushion 4 is expanded at a time due to an operation of inflator 1 but the expansion is not discontinued from a starting time point to an ending time point of the expansion (about 50 ms).
Meanwhile, if a child sits on a passenger seat, he is frequently disposed at a front portion of the passenger seat because he has a keen interest in respects to a forward area and the short femoral region. Accordingly, his face and upper part of the body are disposed to be close to the crush pad 3.
Therefore, he may be strongly struck by airbag cushion 4 which is fully expanded at an early stage of the expansion of airbag cushion 4 when a collision occurs, which causes a significant damage to him.
The information disclosed in this Background of the Invention section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art that is already known to a person skilled in the art.